


Pillow Switch

by conjugation



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Yellow Pillow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 22:03:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2523338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conjugation/pseuds/conjugation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura steals Carmilla's pillow to give her a taste of her own medicine. But the effects backfire and Laura finds herself confused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pillow Switch

Laura yawns.

The bottom right corner of her computer screen tells her that it's 10 minutes past midnight. She quickly peruses through the draft of her lit paper and thinks to herself that she can continue tomorrow. Because god knows, she NEEDS the sleep.

With the recent disappearances, nightmares, blood-thirsty vampires, and the two gaping holes that used to be in her neck, her senses have become more heightened than ever, and she spends most nights just staring at the ceiling. The unforeseeable future, when it involves powerful and malicious vampires aged at least a few centuries, can give you anxiety at all times of the day.

She turns her computer off and gets out of her chair. She turns around to look for a hair tie, and notices Carmilla's bed looking extra empty that night. It's only just midnight, so it'll be another few hours at least before she makes it to the dorm. She feels something funny in her chest - pain? No, something sweet. Like an aching. That realization gives Laura a sinking feeling in her stomach. _No, no, no, that can't be_ , thinks Laura. _She's been lying to me...and...and she BIT me!_

Her mind races and comes up with countless rationalizations as to why she couldn't be missing that difficult, broody vampire. _It...it just doesn't make any sense_ , Laura concludes. Still hovering next to her own bed, she looks across the room and begins to wonder how comfortable Carmilla's mattress is. She knows that it's the same mattress as hers, but she wonders what it's like to sleep in Carmilla's bed. To spend the whole night out doing whatever it is she does, then stroll into the dorm room in the wee hours of the morning to sleep until dusk. On the other side of the room, in that bed.

She walks over and pensively pets the bed sheet when she notices the yellow pillow, seemingly harmlessly lying there. Laura scoffs in her mind, _why can't she use her own pillow_. It doesn't take long before a simple thought of inconvenience becomes the seed that leads to anger: Why CAN'T she use her OWN PILLOW.

"UUGHH!!"

She lets out a low growl, and grabs her yellow pillow off Carmilla's bed and storms 3 steps over to her bed. Laura fiercely places it on her bed, and pats it down as if to assert her possession over the pillow and dominance in this situation. _There_ , thinks Laura. _Where it belongs_. But another thought quickly invades her mind - the vampire's just going to take it again. Reclaiming her pillow wouldn't do anything since it's just a temporary solution. She needs to make a lasting impression.

With a mischievous grin on her face, she grabs her yellow pillow and places it back on Carmilla's bed (but at the foot of the bed so she knows Laura isn't happy), and grab's Carmilla's pink pillow (rather, shirt pillow) and picks it up with much triumph and pleasure. She casually walks back to her bed and lays down Carmilla's pillow gently, brushing it off as she does so. _That's better,_ she thinks, _that should get my message across_.

She gets up, grabs her hair tie, and heads to the washroom to get ready for bed. As she is brushing her teeth, she peaks into the room to see if Carmilla has returned to see the cards turned on her. Her heart, inflated from the excitement of revenge, sinks a little at the sight, but not to worry - the night is still young. When she is done, she enters the room and turns off all the lights.

She gets into her bed and as soon as she lays her head down on the pillow, she begins to smell the scent of the shampoo they share. But it's different from how she remembers it - it's much more sweet and rich, and Laura thinks it also smells a little of the pleasant dew of the woods. Laura can't quite place the scent, but she knows that it's possibly one of the most comforting fragrances she has encountered.

And yet, Laura feels her nerves sharpen even more, her heartbeat grow stronger, and her chest tighten. She sighs as she turns over to the other side. Maybe she's even more strung out over the dean than she thought, because it almost seems like she's having a mild anxiety attack. Her mind is racing, her body is itching to move, and it seems to be getting hotter in the room. She kicks her bed cover half way down, and takes a deep breath.

 _It is definitely what she smells of when she's in the room_ , thinks Laura as she repositions her pillow. Her little passive aggressive act of revenge isn't giving her as much satisfaction as she thought it would. Maybe it's because she has so much frustration and many, many issues yet to be worked out with her. Her qualms with Carmilla ranged from small, harmless things like her general disagreeable disposition and inconsiderate actions of a roommate, to much larger things like deception and betrayal - Carmilla had bit her. If you cared about someone, you sure don't express it by physically harming her. And her excuse that she "is a vampire and was pissed off" certainly isn't good enough. Laura would have been more than accommodating if Carmilla had explained her motives in a logical way.

Laura spends quite a long time working through her dissatisfaction with Carmilla, and surprises herself by her own feelings - she didn't think she would be this mad at her. She didn't even think it was in her own nature to hold such a grudge against someone. But the way Laura feels about Carmilla right now - it is definitely the strongest sentiments of disapproval and frustration she has felt about anyone in her life. Her body is exhausted and begs for sleep, but her mind won't stop racing.

**Creak....*tap tap tap tap***

As soon as she hears Carmilla enter the room, Laura turns herself into a sleeping log. With her eyes closed, her ears perk up, and she tries to identify Carmilla's movements. _Okay, she's taking her jacket off...taking her shoes off....and going straight to bed_. She hears a slight rustling of the bed sheets before complete silence takes over the room.

_That's it? She doesn't even notice that the pillow isn't hers? That her own pillow is missing?_

But Laura quickly let's it go and admits that this is just who Carmilla is. Completely uncaring of everything but herself.

Laura lets out a silent yawn. Her thoughts have died down, and despite the fact her revenge wasn't as sweet as she expected, she's willing to let it go because she's simply too tired to care.

Laura's up at 8AM the next morning, and much to her surprise, she feels refreshed. She fell asleep around the time of Carmilla's arrival which meant that she fell asleep a good while after 3AM, but her mind and body felt so rejuvenated. Maybe it's because she didn't have any dreams that night, or maybe it's because she worked out a lot of frustration she had toward Carmilla. She was happy and feeling great. She leaves for her morning class with a spring in her step.

She returns to a dorm room with a sleeping Carmilla in it. Laura moves quietly as to not disturb her roommate's sleep, although that has never happened before. She begins her reading assignments and goes out briefly for dinner around 8PM, and returns to find a still sleeping Carmilla. Laura thinks maybe she's had a rough night (for a vampire), and continues her assignments. Maybe sleeping vampires make people sleepy, but Laura can't turn down the strong temptation to turn in early for the night. She doesn't have urgent homework, so she thinks she might as well get some more sleep. She tucks in before 11PM, and despite her worry that she would toss and turn, she falls into a deep, comfortable sleep immediately.

The alarm wakes Laura up at 7:30AM. She wakes up feeling completely refreshed yet again. She thinks to herself, maybe whatever problem there was is gone, now. She hasn't had sleep like this in a long time, and two nights in a row, too. She packs her bags and heads to class again, with a log called Carmilla still passed out on the other bed.

Much to Laura's surprise, Carmilla isn't in the room when she comes back to the dorm a little past 5PM. It's rare, but it did happen time to time _. Maybe she's gone out earlier so she can spend more time with her study buddies,_ scoffs Laura. _Whatever, I have a lot of work to do today_.

Laura spends 2 hours working on her assignments from various classes, then receives a text from Danny asking to grab dinner together. She leaves the dorm and returns around 8:30, with a full stomach and a smile on her face. She hums a little as she walks straight to her computer to continue writing the paper for her lit class.

"You seem perky."

Laura yelps a little out of fear and surprise.

"You scared me," replies Laura, turning around on her chair to face Carmilla.

There she was, in her black leather pants and red flannel, reading some more of that Camus that she's so fond of, casually laid out on her bed.

"Sorry, cutie, didn't mean to scare you," replies Carmilla in a sarcastic tone, shooting Laura a look.

"Right. I should've known that the good mood Danny put me in wouldn't last long around you," snarks Laura. She doesn't mean to be so snappy, but she can't resist a hot emotion rising from beneathe the surface.

"Well, well, a date with the redhead giantess? How adorable," She drags out each syllable, each word dripping with sarcasm and disdain.

Laura turns to face her computer screen. "It wasn't a date, and it's none of your business," spits out Laura. Seriously, is she asking because she cares what happens between Laura and Danny? Or is she just out to humiliate her.

"Well, buttercup, it seems it IS my business since your mood seems to be dictated so much by what you do with that red ogre. Like this."

Laura turns around to see what Carmilla is referring to, and sees Carmilla's white, slender fingers pointing to the yellow pillow which she is leaning against.

"You think I don't notice your pathetic little passive aggressive outbursts around here? The dirty dishes lain on my bed? My dirty clothes you stuff in my dresser? The pillows that you switched?" Carmilla's face is scrunched and her voice is slightly trembling from excitement, louder than usual.

"If you want your pillow back so much, you can have it. And rest assured, I won't take it ever again," Carmilla belts as she tosses the yellow pillow on Laura's bed and takes the the pink pillow to hers, leaning on it and aggressively opening a book by Camus.

"Great, finally," Laura directs her words at the face hiding behind the book, and immediately turns around to start typing madly into the computer. Her plan of revenge finally worked - Carmilla has promised not to take her yellow pillow again (and she takes her word for it because Carmilla Karnstein is the type of person who never makes promises). But the boiling feeling in Laura's chest doesn't seem to go away. She spends the another two hours desperately trying to concentrate on her essay.

Carmilla spends the rest of the night reading in the dorm, and turns in before midnight (also quite rare). Laura keeps working on her essay with a lamp light next to her. She enters a flow and gets quite close to completing her assignment before her concentration breaks. The clock on her PC is telling her it's almost 2AM. Laura figures she could go to sleep now and finish the rest of it tomorrow. She decides to postpone her psych reading and heads to the washroom to brush her teeth.

Laura is ready to fall asleep when she gets into bed, but is too distracted by a familiar scent. _Right_ , Laura remembers _, I have my yellow pillow back_. It still has a faint smell of Carmilla, but Laura's own scent is much more dominant. For some reason, Laura feels crestfallen. She turns around to face Carmilla. She seems to be deep in sleep (Laura never could tell since she could never hear Carmilla's breath) and quite content. When she thinks about Carmilla being in a happy slumber, she feels miserable by comparison. She feels that something is missing. She looks back in Carmilla's direction, and it doesn't take Laura long to figure out that it's the pillow. Carmilla's pink-shirt-pillowcase pillow. Laura wants it.

Once she realizes how badly she wants it back, she goes as far as to consider just swiping it from under Carmilla's head. But immediately realizes how ridiculous it would be to do so. Laura had no choice but to go to sleep like this; there is no way she could get that pink pillow tonight.

Laura tries her best to come to peace with that idea - it's more ridiculous not to. It's just a pillow, there is absolutely no reason to do anything rash for it. All Laura has to do is close her eyes and fall asleep. As she repeats those words in her mind, she breathes deeply and closes her eyes. _Ok, you can do this_ , thinks Laura. _Sleep. Count sheep if you have to_. She spends close to 20 minutes concentrating on breathing and attempting to calm herself.

She can't take it anymore. She sits up and rips the bed cover off her body. In the last while, enough frustration has built up in her to push her over the edge and give her enough guts and nerves to go through with this.

Laura walks over to Carmilla's bed, gently lifts her covers, and slides her body behind Carmilla's, who's facing the wall. Carmilla must have really been asleep because her head moves around sluggishly, then jerks back to see what's happening. Before Carmilla actually turns around to say something, Laura quickly belts,

"Don't."

Carmilla ceases all movement. All Laura can see is a very small portion of Carmilla's profile - her procelain skin on her cheekbones seems to be luminating in the moonlight.

"Don't...say anything. I don't...know what I'm doing. I just need this. Okay?"

Laura hears herself speak and thinks it sounds pathetic and needy. As soon as the words leave her mouth, she feels mortified.

Carmilla, as if to show Laura that she understands, turns her face back to the wall and inches forward, making some room for Laura. Laura, complying with Carmilla's consideration, inches closer to Carmilla and away from the edge of the bed. Both of their heads fit in the pink pillow, and Laura's welcomed with the scent she has been longing for, stronger than ever. She sighs out of content and closes her eyes to go to sleep. Just as Laura's about to cross into dreamland, she feels something cold on her hand. It's a hand, Carmilla's hand, grabbing Laura's right hand and...leading it around Carmilla's stomach so that Laura's almost spooning her. It jolts Laura out of sleep and blood rushes to Laura's face.

"Don't say anything. I don't know what I'm doing. I just need this, okay?"

A goodfy smile forms on Laura's face and she doesn't miss this chance: she wraps her arms tighter around Carmilla's hips, reduce the distance between their bodies, and buries her face in Carmilla's hair.

Laura's heart is beating fast, but she has a feeling it won't stop her from having a sweet dream.


End file.
